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THE LOCAL RECIPES

SUMMER

How to make Swedish cold poached salmon

Poached salmon is a Swedish summer classic. Food writer John Duxbury shares his recipe with The Local.

Published: 22 July 2016 06:59 CEST
How to make Swedish cold poached salmon
Cold poached salmon. Photo: John Duxbury/Swedish Food

Swedes cook the salmon by pouring boiling marinade over the fish and letting it slowly cool until cold. It is normally served cold with new potatoes and dill mayonnaise, often at Midsummer, but great any day really.

Summary

Serves: 4

Preparation: 5 minutes

Cooking: 15 minutes

Total: 20 minutes + cooling time

Ingredients

600g (1 ¼ lb) salmon fillet

Marinade

1 ½ litres (3 pints) water

1 small onion, peeled and sliced

1 small red onion, peeled and sliced

2 carrots, peeled and sliced

1 unwaxed lemon, sliced

3-6 dill stalks, leaves removed

3 tbsp white wine vinegar

1 tbsp salt

6 white peppercorns

4 whole allspice berries

2 bay leaves

½ tsp fennel seeds, optional

1 star anise, optinonal

2 sheets of quick dissolving gelatine, optional

Method for individual portions

1. Place all the marinade ingredients in a large saucepan. Boil the marinade for five minutes. If you want to glaze individual portions, while the marinade is boiling soak the gelatine sheets into a bowl of cold water for four to five minutes and then gently squeeze the water from the gelatine and add to the hot marinade. Stir until the gelatine is dissolved.

2. Put the salmon pieces in the pan and return to the boil for one minute.

3. Remove the pan from the heat and let the fish cool slowly in the pan with the lid on.

4. When cold enough, transfer the pan to the fridge and leave to cool overnight.

Method for a whole piece

1. Pre-heat your oven to 140C.

2. Place all the marinade ingredients in a large saucepan. Boil for five minutes.

3. Optional step: while the marinade is boiling soak the gelatine sheets into a bowl of cold water for four to five minutes and then gently squeeze the water from the gelatine and add to the hot marinade. Stir until the gelatine is dissolved.

4. Lightly butter a large baking dish or roasting pan. Add the salmon, skin side up, and pour the marinade over it, ensuring that the salmon is completely covered.

5. Cook in the bottom of the oven for 10-15 minutes or until the temperature in the middle of the thickest part of the salmon reaches 50C.

6. Remove the salmon from the oven and let the fish cool slowly in the marinade.

7. When cold enough, transfer the dish to a fridge and leave to cool overnight.

8. Remove the fish from the marinade and let it drain a bit. Serve with new potatoes and a sauce of your choice (see the Swedish Food website for tips and recipes for sauces).

Tips

– For a party, a large piece of salmon looks stylish and often takes pride of place on a Swedish smörgåsbord (buffet). To make it more attractive, add some gelatine to the marinade to give the salmon a light gloss (see the optional ingredients above).

– In asparagus season, pair the salmon with new potatoes, asparagus and homemade mayonnaise or hollandaise sauce: fabulous! 

This recipe is published courtesy of John Duxbury, founder and editor of Swedish Food.

FOOD AND DRINK

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

Should you tip in Sweden? Habits are changing fast thanks to new technology and a hard-pressed restaurant trade, writes James Savage.

Published: 5 April 2024 13:59 CEST
OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

The Local’s guide to tipping in Sweden is clear: tip for good service if you want to, but don’t feel the pressure: where servers in the US, for instance, rely on tips to live, waiters in Sweden have collectively bargained salaries with long vacations and generous benefits. 

But there are signs that this is changing, and the change is being accelerated by card machines. Now, many machines offer three preset gratuity percentages, usually starting with five percent and going up to fifteen or twenty. Previously they just asked the customer to fill in the total amount they wanted to pay.

This subtle change to a user interface sends a not-so-subtle message to customers: that tipping is expected and that most people are probably doing it. The button for not tipping is either a large-lettered ‘No Tip’ or a more subtle ‘Fortsätt’ or ‘Continue’ (it turns out you can continue without selecting a tip amount, but it’s not immediately clear to the user). 

I’ll confess, when I was first presented with this I was mildly irked: I usually tip if I’ve had table service, but waiting staff are treated as professionals and paid properly, guaranteed by deals with unions; menu prices are correspondingly high. The tip was a genuine token of appreciation.

But when I tweeted something to this effect (a tweet that went strangely viral), the responses I got made me think. Many people pointed out that the restaurant trade in Sweden is under enormous pressure, with rising costs, the after-effects of Covid and difficulties recruiting. And as Sweden has become more cosmopolitain, adding ten percent to the bill comes naturally to many.

Boulebar, a restaurant and bar chain with branches around Sweden and Denmark, had a longstanding policy of not accepting tips at all, reasoning that they were outdated and put diners in an uncomfortable position. But in 2021 CEO Henrik Kruse decided to change tack:

“It was a purely financial decision. We were under pressure due to Covid, and we had to keep wages down, so bringing back tips was the solution,” he said, adding that he has a collective agreement and staff also get a union bargained salary, before tips.

Yet for Kruse the new machines, with their pre-set tipping percentages, take things too far:

“We don’t use it, because it makes it even clearer that you’re asking for money. The guest should feel free not to tip. It’s more important for us that the guest feels free to tell people they’re satisfied.”

But for those restaurants that have adopted the new interfaces, the effect has been dramatic. Card processing company Kassacentralen, which was one of the first to launch this feature in Sweden, told Svenska Dagbladet this week that the feature had led to tips for the average establishment doubling, with some places seeing them rise six-fold.

Even unions are relaxed about tipping these days, perhaps understanding that they’re a significant extra income for their members. Union representatives have often in the past spoken out against tipping, arguing that the practice is demeaning to staff and that tips were spread unevenly, with staff in cafés or fast food joints getting nothing at all. But when I called the Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Union (HRF), a spokesman said that the union had no view on the practice, and it was a matter for staff, business owners and customers to decide.

So is tipping now expected in Sweden? The old advice probably still stands; waiters are still not as reliant on tips as staff in many other countries, so a lavish tip is not necessary. But as Swedes start to tip more generously, you might stick out if you leave nothing at all.

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